ST. PAUL - ON LIFE AND DEATH

       Today’s second reading is the first of a series of four over the next few Sundays taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Christians of Philippi in ancient Macedonia, one of the local Churches St. Paul founded in person.

       He deals with a problem that many saints have wrestled with and puzzled over down the centuries, and which we may well recognize, too. It is this: if at the end of this life we will have the true fulfilment of knowing God in heaven, would it not be better to be finished with this life sooner rather than later? Yet, at the same time, if God has put us here on earth to do good works for Him, shouldn’t we accept that it is better to stay here as long as possible to do even more for His sake?  This is why he says: “I want to be gone and be with Christ, which would be very much better, but for me to stay alive in this body is a more urgent need for your sake.” In the end, of course, we have not the means to make this decision. We cannot know when God sees that it is the right moment for us to leave this life and come to Him.  

     This, of course, is at the heart of our rejection of euthanasia (in Canada, the legislation in favour of this has made federal government ministers into more explicit Merchants of Death and doctors who cooperate with such measures into betraying the Hippocratic Oath), in which persons decide either for themselves, or for others, the answer to the question: “When is the right time for this particular life to come to an end?” With St. Paul all Christians believe that our life has been given us by God in order to serve Him to the best of our talents and abilities, and that just as He alone has decided when our life should begin, and in what circumstances, so He alone has the true vision to determine the proper time and manner of ending that same life which He has given.              ~  Fr. Paul Dobson